


Pea Flower

by Puffinpastry



Series: Once and Floral [1]
Category: Great Pretender (Anime)
Genre: Can be read as one-sided or mutual, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, It’s more like a chronic illness, M/M, Pre-Relationship, but non-lethal, discovery of feelings, post s2e9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28969539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puffinpastry/pseuds/Puffinpastry
Summary: For years, Laurent had found himself coughing up pink and white flowers seemingly whenever the pain was at its worst.The attacks came less and less as the days passed and the grief settled down to something approaching tolerable.But when all is said and done, and he again finds his chest tight and the air hard to breathe...Oddly, these are not the flowers he has come to know.
Relationships: Edamura Makoto/Laurent Thierry, Past Dorothy/ Laurent Thierry
Series: Once and Floral [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128344
Comments: 6
Kudos: 99





	Pea Flower

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve got a few ideas for longer fic in this fandom, but after binging season 2 the other day, I had this idea and I had to get it on paper.  
> I might add on to it at some point, but for now...

There are things you hear about happening, just to stop and shrug and go,  _ well, that won’t ever happen to me. _

Except as much as he liked to pretend otherwise… 

Laurent always expected the worst.

He tried not to. He knew that planning for the worst was inviting failure. But some things, some things just changed you.

Laurent was always prepared to end up with a bullet in his skull, and his bones at the bottom of the ocean.

To spend his life in chains.

To be abandoned.

Forgotten.

But  _ this? _

He gasped, choked, coughed, and more petals joined the leaves in the toilet bowl.

Heaving and crying, he knew he truly hadn’t ever expected this. 

The hands holding his hair back were gentle, and the words in his ears were kind.

But that was all Shi-Won could do.

There was no cure, aside from love returned, but that…

He would scream, if he just had the air.

The first attack came weeks ago, when he first-

When Dorothy had died, and all the love, all the terror and shock and grief, all the love, all the love…

It had nowhere to go.

It wouldn’t kill him.

Of  _ course  _ it wouldn’t. That would be too easy.

It would be too convenient for him to perish so simply, to die just as Dorothy did. To be done in by illness, illness that was partly his own fault, partly hers. 

But Hanahaki didn’t kill, it didn't maim.

Not unless you were one of the unlucky souls who found the bloom you were coughing up to be toxic in its own right.

But Laurent’s wasn’t, and as such, it was just  _ there. _

There were treatments, medications that could prune the branches, so to speak, but there was no way to pluck the roots from the lungs. 

The disease would come, and the disease would go.

On and off, like the tides of the ocean.

For however long it took.

The tile was gone.

The floor was wood, and he was no longer on it. 

He’d fallen when he’d gotten up to rush to the bathroom, but the oxygen was already so thin… It was kind of her to help him back onto the covers.

A different house, a different life, a different friend.

But the same disease. 

“I’ll get your medicine.” Cynthia’s hands left his shoulders, and she didn’t give him the time to catch his breath to tell her not to bother.

He probably didn’t have any left, and he never cared enough to go get more.

His breath caught, his throat burned. He tasted the copper of his own blood, the salt of his own tears, and the bitterness of the plants.

But he wasn’t afraid.

He never was. Not of this.

Not anymore.

These fits passed. They always did.

...Strange, though.

It had been a handful of years, had it not? Laurent had thought that the disease had passed, at long, long last.

That his pain and love had faded to not  _ nothing,  _ but that both had just become such an image part of his being, that there wasn’t much left…

Well.

Maybe it was the fact that they’d finally done it. That  _ he’d  _ finally done it.

For her. 

That this was one last visit, one last good-bye.

If that was the case… 

Laurent’s breath came as a wheeze, the air stinging in his raw throat as the world tilted and his vision swam.

If that was the case, then it didn’t matter.

He would welcome it, if it was the last he’d have of her. 

There were still spots in his vision when Laurent pried his eyes open, but-

But…

The petals he saw on the floor were not hers. The pink and white of the azalea blossoms were not quite right.

Laurent lifted one of the small flowers from the ground. It was speckled with blood. 

_ Real  _ blood, not the colored syrup that filled the packets that Oz so fond of using. 

White, aside from the red of the mentioned blood, but the pink… It was not the bright neon he was so accustomed to. 

It was so much smaller. It was softer. Gentle in a way that the azaleas never were. That she never quite was. 

This was… A plum blossom? No, that wasn’t right.

No matter what the flower was, this didn’t make sense.

_ Years  _ he had been coughing up azaleas! Not one episode had the flowers ever changed.

Why  _ now? _

There was no cure. The disease didn’t change. 

There wasn’t…

“Is he alright?” Laurent heard the muffled question through the door. “Is he sick?”

He let the flower drift back down.

“Did he drink too much? I’m not waiting for him if he did.” Abigail ever so kindly said. But Laurent was used to her particular brand of care-disguised-as-disdain.

It was Edamame-  _ Edamura’s  _ question that gave him pause. There wasn’t any of his typical grump and grouch in it.

Even through the wall, it sounded as if he was genuinely concerned. 

“He’ll bounce back by this evening, he always does.”  _ Thank you,  _ Cynthia. Very helpful. “Why don’t the two of you run out and just bring something back for the rest of us?”

“You don’t want to come?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on him.” 

Edamame, edamame… One day, Laurent would understand what made him tick. 

Laurent froze.

These flowers… 

His phone.

He needed his phone.

He just didn’t… 

Minutes passed as he searched. He knew it was somewhere!

The door opened. “Laurent, there wasn’t any —  _ Laurent!”  _ Cynthia slammed the door, and with a fistful of his shirt collar, dragged Laurent from halfway off the bed, just seconds away from falling, to back on the blankets, horizontal and away from the danger of falling and cracking his head open, but without his phone. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“My phone,” he tried to say, but it was hardly more than a wheeze, “I need my phone.”

“Right now?” Cynthia asked, but as he relaxed again in bed, she didn’t yell any further, but began searching for him.

It was odd, just a little bit so, how kind she was to him during these fits.

Not partners, not family.

But she treated him like a brother nonetheless.

Maybe she knew what this disease was like.

Maybe she knew someone else…

His phone held out above him. “I don’t know what you’re on about. You need to sleep, not-”

“Do you know what those flowers are?” He asked, not giving her the time to launch into a lecture.

“Azaleas.” 

Not anymore. “Look again. Please, do you know?” He’d still need to search, to confirm his little theory, but if she knew… 

“Oh,” Cynthia stared down at the change, but there wasn’t an ounce of recognition, “no. I don’t know.”

Hanahaki doesn’t go away.

Even if it seems like it does, if the attacks come only once in a blue moon, it’s still there. Still waiting.

Not unless the love is returned, and even then…

But the one thing it  _ can  _ do, is change.

One single search, and Laurent let his phone drop.

That was it, then. 

His heart had moved on.

It was funny. After all this time, he’d thought that Dorothy would find a way to stick around forever, but if he were to be honest with himself…

She never would have.

Always moving, always scheming for another target.

There was always going to be  _ one last hit.  _ And another, and another, and another…

Until one way or the next, they were both gone.

She’d moved on, and so had he.

And what a flower to change to.

It would piss him off, Laurent knew right away.

“Laurent?” Cynthia asked, and hell. Was there really any reason to keep her in the dark? Lauren held out his phone, and she took it.

“Ah.” Clear enough from one look. “Soybean flowers. Not really your typical specimen, is it?”

Laurent shrugged. Did it matter?

Going around calling Makoto ‘Edamame…’

He’d dug his own damned grave with this one.

“What are you going to do?”

_ Oh. _

That’s right. He actually had the power to change this one.

He was so used to just having to suffer… 

Well.

He’d suffered worse than rejection before.

And if nothing else, this proved that he wasn’t trapped. 

Laurent tried to clear his throat, and just decided to pretend he didn’t sound like he’d swallowed a pound of holly leaves. “When will they be back?”


End file.
